Winning the peace is never as easy as winning the war, the old cliche goes. Fears rose last night that the fabric of Iraqi society could fall apart in the wake of the fall of Baghdad.
Arab TV channels across the Middle East played down the news of the fall of Baghdad yesterday, focusing on scenes of chaos and looting.
Coalition forces moved to within 16 kilometres of Mosul yesterday amid signs that the Iraqi northern frontlines were starting to crumble and that the US was preparing a ground offensive.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, yesterday accused Syria of helping senior members of Iraq’s Ba’ath regime to escape.
Even by Arab standards, the cult of Saddam Hussein was obsessive. Until yesterday, it was difficult to turn a corner in Baghdad without coming upon a statue or poster of him.
The bodies of 75 Aboriginal men and women were returned to Australia yesterday after spending decades in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Mugabe’s government has committed severe human rights abuses against the opposition party, has repressed the press and the judiciary and is largely responsible for the famine in Zimbabwe, according to a Commonwealth report.
He is an unlikely public figure, a quiet man whose hobbies include preparing Swedish fish dishes — but for a few months, the world hung on his every word. So could Hans Blix have done anything to stop the war?
In Damascus, where anger over the invasion of Iraq alternates with pride in the resistance, there is one sure way to lighten the mood. Suggest the war was launched because of Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction. Everyone here believes it is a war for oil.
The problem with The Vagina Monologues is that a show about the worship of a sexual organ is easily lost on those of us who want to understand the deeper meaning behind men’s, and indeed women’s, attitudes to sexual violence.